Retail establishments commonly use point of sale terminals or other transaction terminals, such as cash registers, to allow customers of those establishments to purchase items. As an example, in a conventional department store, supermarket or other retail establishment, a customer collects items for purchase throughout the store and places them in a shopping cart or basket (item carrier), or simply carries the items to a point of sale terminal to purchase those items in a transaction.
The point of sale terminal may be staffed with an operator such as a cashier who is a person employed by the store to assist the customer in completing the transaction. In some cases, retail establishments have implemented self-checkout point of sale terminals in which the customer is the operator. In either case, the operator typically places items for purchase on a counter, conveyor belt or other item input area. The point of sale terminals can include a scanning device such as a laser or optical scanner device that operates to identify a Uniform Product Code (UPC) label or bar code affixed to each item that the customer desires to purchase. The laser scanner is usually a peripheral device coupled to a computer that is part of the point-of-sale (POS) terminal. The point-of-sale terminal typically also includes an interface for manual item entry.
To scan an item, the operator picks up each item, one by one, from the item input area and passes each item over a scanning area such as a glass window built into the counter or checkout area to allow the laser scanner to detect the UPC code. Once the point-of-sale computer identifies the UPC code on an item, the computer can perform a lookup in a database to determine the price and identity of the scanned item. Alternatively, in every case where the operator can scan the item, the operator may likewise enter the UPC or product identification code into the terminal manually or through an automatic product identification device such as an RFID reader. The term “scan” is defined generally to include all means of entering transaction items into a transaction terminal. Likewise, the term “scanner” is defined generally as any transaction terminal, automated and/or manual, for recording transaction information.
As the operator scans or enters each item for purchase, one by one, the point of sale terminal maintains an accumulated total purchase price for all of the items in the transaction. For each item that an operator successfully scans or enters, the point of sale terminal typically makes a beeping noise or tone to indicate to the operator that the item has been scanned by the point-of-sale terminal and in response, the operator places the item into an item output area such as a downstream conveyor belt or other area for retrieval of the items by the customer or for bagging of the items into a shopping bag. Once all items in the transaction are scanned in this manner, the operator indicates to the point-of-sale terminal that the scanning process is complete and the point-of-sale terminal displays a total purchase price to the customer who then pays the store for the items purchased in that transaction.
In addition to recording transactions through point-of-sale terminals, retailer establishments also commonly use video surveillance to record point-of-sale activity. Overhead video security cameras record operator behavior near the point-of-sale terminal. Such video security cameras generally operate on a closed circuit network that is separate from the point-of-sale terminal network.
Video surveillance of point-of-sale transaction activity is useful for quality control such as with unintentional failed scans, and to prevent and identify fraud in point-of-sale transactions, such as intentionally failed scans. Some conventional systems include human monitoring systems and video monitoring systems that involve the use of loss prevention personnel overseeing a real-time video feed (or pre-recorded) to identify fraudulent transactions. There also exist automated systems that attempt to identify questionable (suspicious) transactions based on a graphical analysis of video surveillance data.